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In film editing, a transition is what occurs when the video switches from one scene to another. This can lessen the jarring nature of the quick starts and stops between scenes that would occur otherwise and can help make the film flow better for a viewer. In Final Cut Pro, it's possible to add video transitions with only a few steps that will help make your edited films run smoothly.

Steps

1

Choose the clips. To make a transition, the first thing you need is something to transition to and something to transition from. Whether you are editing home movies or your film masterpiece, you need to add at least two scenes to the Final Cut Pro editing timeline.

2

Add a transition between clips. To add a transition, you can either click on the effects tab in the Final Cut Pro browser or the effects button on the top of your program. Either way, you will want to click on the Video Transitions button. There will be many different types of transitions you can use, so experiment with which one works best for the job at hand. In order to add it to the timeline between the clips, drag it from the browser and drop it in between the two clips.

If you want to use the same type of transition between many clips, you can set the default transition of Final Cut Pro and add it to your entire project in one shot. To do this, right click the transition you want to use and select Set as Default. After doing this, you can click on the transition and drag it into the Final Cut Pro canvas and drop it in the Overwrite with Transition box. This will apply that transition to every clip in your timeline without making you do it one at a time. If you only want to add the default transition to a single pair of clips, you can select the area between the two and use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+T. This will insert the default transition in only that one place.

3

View the transition. In order to view the transition you've added between your clips, you will have to render the area effected by the transition. This will be denoted by a red line above that area in the time line. After rendering it, make sure the transition suits your clips, and if not go back and change it until it does.

Community Q&A

Warnings

Remember that video transitions and audio transitions are handled differently. If you want to keep the audio from fading out, or make the audio fade out with the transition, you will have to apply audio transitions as well. This can be done in almost the same way as video transitions, but will be in the audio transition section of the Final Cut Pro browser.